


red right hand

by brophigenia



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: 1920s, Aftercare, Alternate Universe - 1920s, Blow Jobs, Crossdressing, F/M, Fantasizing, Fighting, Fist Fights, Hand Jobs, Inspired By Peaky Blinders, M/M, Masturbation, Mild Blood, Mild D/s, Period-Typical Homophobia, Pre-OT4, Pre-Poly, Rough Sex, Voyeurism, and what does my dog need?, handies., my life is this: writing strange aus for y'all, no spoilers for cdth, sort of? not BAD. like i see that tag and get upsetti spaghetti but there's nothing BAD.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:56:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22055908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brophigenia/pseuds/brophigenia
Summary: Ronan grinned, slow andbloodthirsty.Gansey raised his eyebrows in faint distaste and surprise.Oh,that expression said,how uncouth.One by one, he removed his fingers from Ronan’s shoulder.(AKA, it's the 1920s, Niall Lynch was a bootlegger, Blue Sargent is crossdressing so she can attend Aglionby as James Sargent, Adam has lots of feelings and only one outlet for them: studying, and Ronan is still Gansey's dog. With sexy results.)
Relationships: Richard Gansey III & Ronan Lynch & Adam Parrish & Blue Sargent, Richard Gansey III/Blue Sargent, Richard Gansey III/Ronan Lynch, Richard Gansey III/Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish/Blue Sargent, Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Comments: 13
Kudos: 170





	red right hand

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so I was rewatching Peaky Blinders season 1 because it's the only one that doesn't give me terrible feelings, and then I was like GOD Gansey would be hot as a crime boss gentleman like Tommy Shelby?? And then I was like BLOWJOBS. And then this happened. 
> 
> Title from Red Right Hand by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, cut lyrics from Bootlegger's Boy by Old Crow Medicine Show.

_ them knoxville girls can’t leave me alone _ _   
_ _ in my suit so fine, and my bottled corn _

_ *** _

“Thatherton, how nice of you to join us.” Gansey said, with a genial smile almost conspiratorial in its intimate wryness. One hand remained tucked into his waistcoat while the other fell to Ronan’s shoulder, elegant and restraining. It made a statement; Adam could hardly take his eyes away from the sight of Gansey’s aristocratic fingers resting against Ronan’s deep navy uniform jacket, determinedly rumpled but sharply-tailored. 

Thatherton sputtered wordlessly, caught inescapably by the arms between Adam and Sargent, who’d  _ collected  _ him coming out of the English building. Though Sargent was small, he had an iron grip; it didn’t hurt that he carried a small knife, either, that he liked to flip casually between his fingers during breaks in the courtyard. 

“We have heard that you’ve been making certain statements to certain people about certain things.” Adam was the master of speaking in roundabout riddles that admitted no guilt but got his point across nonetheless. Vague and menacing all at once. His use of the royal ‘we’ in situations like this was the icing on the cake, Blue often reflected. 

The recipient of this speech —these  _ accusations—  _ was not nearly as intimidated as he ought to have been. Adam wrinkled his nose and wondered who had instilled this overgrown nursery pup with such false estimations of his own intelligence and social worth. The son of a federal judge was no one to scoff at, true, but he was not a  _ Gansey.  _

“What, that you’re all pederast  _ bootleggers?”  _ Ward or Marv or Chet —they all tended to blend into one sneering blur after long enough at Aglionby Academy— all but  _ shrieked.  _ It was the sound of prey trying to sound less vulnerable; it was the sound of prey about to be  _ devoured.  _

Ronan grinned, slow and  _ bloodthirsty.  _ Gansey raised his eyebrows in faint distaste and surprise.  _ Oh,  _ that expression said,  _ how uncouth.  _ One by one, he removed his fingers from Ronan’s shoulder. Adam and Sargent stepped to the side, freeing Thatherton’s arms. 

Released, Ronan  _ dove  _ onto their guest, an attack dog freed from the confines of its leash. 

***

“Thank you, Adam. James.” Gansey said lightly, his eyes burning bright with the sort of special fire that came from only  _ this  _ sort of situation, Ronan’s nose bloodied and his knuckles gone black already, swollen. The blood was on his teeth, staining his wicked grin. He was panting. Thatherton was long gone, having half-stumbled half-crawled down the hall, face resembling ground meat and a few ribs quite clearly broken. 

It was a dismissal, Gansey’s genteel expression of gratitude. Adam did not want to leave; he wanted to stay right here, clean up Ronan’s blood and help bring both of them back to earth, back to Aglionby, back to being  _ all of us  _ instead of  _ Gansey & Lynch.  _

He could not say any of this, of course— it simply wasn’t done. As much as it ached, stung,  _ hurt,  _ Adam was an addition, a scholarship student, a bit of riffraff to hang around and be grateful for scraps. Sargent dealt with it, better, for all that he’d come from (it was rumored) the Gypsy mistress of some rich congressman, skin a few shades darker than  _ acceptable  _ and smaller than all the other boys, even the freshmen. Sargent was no scholarship student, but he was still just as  _ other  _ as Adam, among these sterling All-American blue bloods. 

“Gansey. Ronan.” Adam nodded, instead of begging to be allowed to  _ stay. _ Both literally and metaphorically. He followed Sargent out, and stopped suddenly when he saw Sargent lean up against the now-closed door, casually coiled with his arms crossed over his chest, a couple coils of unruly hair falling over his forehead and adding to the whole  _ dangerous rake  _ look. Like Sargent had come out of some dimestore pulp book. 

There was a muffled noise from the shut-up classroom that Gansey and Ronan still occupied, like something had been knocked over. A  _ thud. _ Sargent didn’t move, expression not even flickering, even when there was a low keen that quite obviously belonged to Ronan. Adam’s cheeks  _ flamed.  _

Sargent’s purpose in guarding the room became very clear. 

_ Pederasts,  _ Rhett had spat at them all, and Adam had felt the word screw itself full of icy shame into his gut but not imagined it was so  _ applicable.  _ Not to Gansey, who could have anyone. Not to Ronan, as beautiful as a statue of an arcangel. Not to Sargent, who spoke to women easily, as if he was not the least bit intimidated. 

Adam folded his arms over his own chest and leant up against the other side of the door, resolving himself to be as stoic as Sargent, who was not even hard in his uniform trousers from the overheard cacophony of passion meeting their pricked ears. 

It would have to be enough. If this were the price for being in Gansey’s orbit, in Ronan’s, in Sargent’s, it would have to be enough. 

Once the noises stopped with one last,  _ final  _ yell from Ronan, Sargent slipped off easily, soundless as a cat. Adam knew he should follow, head in the same direction, towards the dormitories. 

Instead, his feet took him to the library, where he could spend the half-hour before Latin studying the day’s lesson. He would be perfect, come time for Whelk’s whipcrack questioning. He would be  _ perfect,  _ and  _ not  _ the sort of moral degenerate who got hard listening to his best friends in the world finding solace in each other. 

***

“Ronan.” Gansey said, low, in a different way than he’d said  _ Ronan  _ and stopped the melee of fists meeting flesh earlier. That  _ Ronan  _ had meant  _ stop.  _ This  _ Ronan  _ meant  _ go.  _

Ronan stepped up into Gansey’s space, keeping his eyes fixed to his best friend’s collarbones, beneath the neatly-buttoned uniform shirt. He could see them through the fabric with the help of his sun-drenched memories, thinking of Gansey’s skin turning golden during long days spent at the lake where the Ganseys kept a house. He thought of the worn-smooth dock planks beneath his knees and the scent of the water, and Ronan was  _ dizzy  _ with it. 

Gansey grounded him graciously with a grip on the shorn-bare curve of his skull, feathered the gentlest kiss onto Ronan’s forehead like a clumsy kind of apology, and then used that grip to shove Ronan down, down,  _ down.  _

It was a pleasant thing, the maelstrom buzz in his head quieted by the touch of Gansey’s hand, the absolute stillness between them as he waited for Gansey to open up his own trousers, pull out his hard cock, feed it between his lips like ambrosia. Like sacrament. Like everything but what it was, what Ronan’s father would call it if he knew, turning somersaults in his unmarked grave. 

He was not graceful at this, was not practiced like the dance hall girls that he’d seen performing the act as professionally as their on-stage theatrics, gagging messily and choking with saliva running down his chin, pinkish with blood. 

He clenched his hands into fists, shook when his knuckles screamed at him, shredded at Gansey’s behest. 

But  _ oh  _ it was good. He wanted to be closer. Wanted Gansey all the way down his throat. Wanted him to stay here. Wanted to bend over one of the goddamn desks and  _ beg  _ for it, for something Gansey had never given to him. For something he’d not worked up the courage to  _ ask  _ for, and  _ couldn’t.  _ The sort of thing that went beyond what was permissible for young men to do, here in the wilderness with nobody but themselves for company. There was not a woman under forty around for  _ miles,  _ save Sargent, and she didn’t count, anyway, buttoned to the throat and  _ hiding.  _

Ronan didn’t mind that there were no women to be had; it meant that he didn’t have to betray himself. It was easy to let himself be  _ taken _ when there was no other option. 

It was easy to be  _ this,  _ aching in the jaw and the cock and the knuckles, to be  _ Gansey’s.  _ To be more than a new-money mutt, more than an orphan, more than  _ Ronan Lynch.  _

When it was over, Gansey tore himself backwards, fell into a chair that clattered too-loudly when he sank into it, legs scraping against the scarred-wood floor. “Come here.” He sighed, and meant  _ stay close to me.  _

Ronan did not crawl, but rose with his knees cracking painfully to limp over, standing between Gansey’s negligently-spread legs at attention. “Hands.” Gansey murmured, and drew a handkerchief from his pocket, daubing at the blood that had collected on Ronan’s skin, delicately cleaning him off with monogrammed linen and a touch of his own spit. Ronan floated, in his mind, mouth bruised and swollen, stomach full of  _ Gansey.  _ Heart bursting open. 

That task done, Gansey went on industriously to Ronan’s trouser fastenings, freeing them enough that he could slip his hand inside and give Ronan a series of slow strokes, wrist twisting on each pull upwards, until Ronan’s knees were weak and he was coming with a shout, inelegant and  _ telling.  _

They were done, then. Gansey cleaned his own hand off with the bloodied handkerchief and then tucked the thing into his own pocket with only a bit of a wince, fastidious to a fault. Ronan imagined that it would stain the inside of Gansey’s jacket, that  _ he  _ would stain the inside of Gansey’s jacket. He was still too-high with it. 

It was nearly time for Latin. Ronan followed Gansey out, trying to walk as straight but failing. He was no boy-king, for all of his own father’s efforts. He did not have shoulders made of wrought gold. 

***

“Oh.” Blue whispered, shivering, sliding down the now-locked door to her single bedroom so she could shove her hand down the front of her damnably-well-buttoned trousers. She was so wet that she couldn’t even find purchase,  _ friction, _ without first mopping at herself with the leg of her underwear. It was so much. Everything was  _ so much.  _ “Oh!” She gasped, and then pressed her free hand to her mouth, conscious of how thin their dormitory walls were. 

Watching Ronan brace Rhett Thatherton had gotten her blood hot, thinking of what he’d do if Gansey had said to blip the stiff off, what  _ she’d  _ do if Gansey asked  _ her  _ to do it, thinking of how Gansey was all smugness and terrible superiority watching Ronan do his bidding. He was everything that was wrong with the world, but  _ fuck,  _ Gansey was a dish. He was a dish and he carried magic in every step, every wave of his fine hands. 

She didn’t press her fingers inside— she only rubbed furiously at herself where the ache was highest, cold fire all over her body, imagining that it was how Gansey would do it, hooking his chin over her shoulder and putting one of those fine hands down her trousers so he could make her come, watching the way his wrist disappeared beneath the wool. 

She’d have to share him with Ronan, but that was alright— she’d come into it knowing the score. Adam hadn’t, but he would figure out his footing soon enough. Then he could maybe distract Ronan sometimes, so she could have Gansey all to herself. She built a web of familiar fantasy in her mind, a world where they could be  _ together:  _ her and Gansey, yes, but the four of them, too. She did not  _ want  _ Adam and Ronan in the same way she wanted Gansey (full, hot, rose-red, burning in her chest like Jimi’s bathtub gin) but she wanted them with her, nonetheless. They made  _ sense, _ as a unit. She wanted them close; she wanted them whole. 

It was a foolish picture, but she was used to feeling foolish when it came to Gansey. 

Blue thought of his fingers lifting off of Ronan’s shoulder like a declaration of war; she imagined him setting her loose like that, putting that much faith in her fists, her mind, the edge of her blade. 

She came, biting down so hard on the meat of her palm that she was afraid it would leave a mark even as her knees spasmed and the backs of her eyelids got bright like fireworks going off on the Fourth of July. 

Latin. She was going to be late for Latin. 

On shaking legs, Blue rushed to the now-cold basin of water by her bed, fumbling her cufflinks until she could roll up her sleeves. The soap was Persephone’s, black as night and smelling like frankincense and ashes.  _ To help you hide,  _ Persephone always murmured wryly when she passed over new cakes of the stuff during Blue’s seldom visits home. Blue scrubbed it over her knuckles, her fingernails, rubbing it thoroughly into the knobs of her wrists. Behind her ears got the same treatment, and the bare curve of her jawbone where everyone  _ else  _ had stubble stubbornly resisting the touch of their razorblades. 

Everyone else was already seated when she arrived,  _ just  _ on time, though Ronan had saved her a seat right in front of his own. With a sardonic, mocking tilt of his left eyebrow he directed her down with a nod. Gansey, to his right, gave her a genial smile. He was wearing his wireframe glasses, as he always did during class. It made her feel stupid for a long second before she sat down and pulled out her Wheelock. 

Whelk arrived then, sweeping in with disdain and unearned regality. “Open your books to chapter seventeen.” He said, taking his place at the podium. To Blue’s right, Adam seemed the very picture of studious contemplation. Behind her, she could practically  _ hear  _ Ronan rolling his eyes. She did not dare glance back at Gansey, but still felt the crackle of his presence in the air. 

_ Whole.  _

***

_ i fought five rounds and then i put him away _

_ with a wicked jab from a razorblade _

**Author's Note:**

> follow me on twitter @ brophigenia  
> follow me on tumblr @ brophigenia.tumblr.com


End file.
